Anjina Devi
Why is nature important? Just because it is pretty good to look at, a part of our enchanting backgrounds in routine selfies and videos and it makes us feel good. No, I don’t think so. It goes even further than that. I think our bond with nature is more majestic and out of the way because we don’t need to be a meditator or spiritual practitioner to experience it. Any of us can quite easily witness and experience the nature. Nature is the sole provider of oxygen, food, clothes, medicine, and shelter to mankind but in return it also need to be nurtured with love, care and protection.
In this period of great distress and melancholy where everyone is facing nationwide lockdown on one side and natural calamities on other side like hurricane ‘Amphan’ that hit Odhisa and West Bengal on May 20 this year where it caused massive damage to standing crops and thousand of trees were uprooted and affected over 10 million people in East Indian states, routine ‘earth tremors’ in capital city Delhi, may be indicative of major earthquake could hit Delhi. Cyclonic storm ‘Nisargya’ recently entered into the lands of Maharashtra which already down on its knees from the raging COVID-19 and caused landfall there. Another threat that is looming in our country is ‘Worst desert locust attack’ where swarms of locusts have invaded vast swathes of land in our country since April this year. These locusts have affected about 90,000 hectares across 20 districts in Rajasthan. As the biological control of these pests i.e birds are gradually declining due to harmful radiations. All these natural disasters have created havoc in the country. It all occurs due to uncontrolled anthropogenic activities that created a disturbance in ecological balance and in turn in food chains and food web. With the advancement in 4th industrial revolution, exploitation of nature and natural resources incalculably to make money ultimately leads to “Climate Change”, a real and serious issue of today’s life.
During my childhood, I used to listen about climate and weather predictions from my grandparents. Their predictions seemed to be accurate based on the regularity of weather events despite the lack of sophisticated tools of modern world. But unfortunately today’s world is experiencing drastic changes in climate as we are witnessing rainfall and snowfall in the month of May which otherwise a month of dry days with bright sunshine with average temperature around 45 C and heavy snowfall in the month of February, March also which usually occurs mainly during the months of December and January. The monsoon, which generally begins in June and retreats in September and delivers around 70% of India’s annual rainfall, shows significant decreased trends in the south west monsoon from 1989 to 2018 in states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar which are known to have among most fertile lands in the country. The root cause of climate change is the disturbance in earth’s heat budget which is mainly due to emission of excessive Green House Gases (GHGs) which leads to global warming and ultimately to climate change. Climate change encompasses not only change in average temperature of the earth but also includes extreme weather events, shifting wildlife populations and habitats, rising sea level and wide range of other impacts. The impact of rising temperature are not waiting far-flung-future, the affects are appearing right now.
The concept of “environmental refugees” has gained global attention as climate change and desertification have threatened the livelihoods of millions of peoples which are forced to leave their traditional habitats temporarily or permanently because of a marked environment disruption (natural and/or triggered by people) that jeopardizes their existence and/or seriously affects the quality of their life. A striking example of this is the small island of Kiribati, where 94,000 lives are on risk; as by 2070 this country will be submerged in water due to sea level rise because of global warming. To combat this, population of Kiribati slowly relocated to neighbouring islands such as New Zealand. Among animals, polar bear is the poster child for the impact of climate change. Their dependence on ice caps for travelling, hunting, mating makes them vulnerable to changing climate and forced them to relocate more towards North Pole. We can see the effects of climate change in vegetation also as these include early flowering and fruiting times. Increased CO2 has been implicated in ‘vegetation thickening’ which affects plant community structure and function. Rise in temperature can increase the rate of any physiological process such as photosynthesis and extreme temperatures beyond the physiological limit of plant will eventually lead to high desiccation rates.
As the world warms, more water evaporates leading to more moisture in the air as a result many areas will experience intense rainfall and in some places snowfall. More flooding is expected from storms and rising sea levels. As change in habitats is faster than adaptations of species may lead to their extinction in near future. As more CO2 is released into the atmosphere, uptake of the gas by the ocean increases causing the water to become more acidic. This could pose major threat to coral reefs.
‘May be animals are less wild and humans are less human’.
Man and animal conflict have become more prevalent in these days. I would like to mention here recent shameful act that happens in Kerala where pregnant elephant was fed a pineapple stuffed with firecrackers. The elephant survived that ordeal but it took the elephant a week to die a painful death. What happened with that wild jumbo is heartbreaking and unacceptable. What a shameful act! It was a tragic incident and blatant animal abuse. We need to intensify patrolling to avoid such incidents and there is a great need to demarcate core zone and buffer zone in protected areas. Moreover, strict action should be taken against those who are responsible for this brutal act.
“To change and to change for the better are two different things”
And we are letting nature to change its dynamics not for the betterment but for the worse of mankind. We never know how heavy the price we have to pay for this changing dynamics of the nature. We never know at the risk of how many lives we are doing this as we have already triggered the “6th major mass extinction”.
WAYFORWARD
Climate change has become a hot topic and a thing of great challenge at national and international level. Human development is must and the world is advancing but this development must be done within the carrying capacity of our ecosystem. Climate change risks can be managed by “mitigation” i.e efforts to curb green house gas emissions and “adaptation” i.e reducing vulnerability to the effects of climate change. It should be our prime duty to use natural resources in a sustainable way. No doubt government is doing commendable job to combat this serious issue, but we, as responsible citizens need to put in some more sincere efforts at grass root level. We need to interact with nature in harmony and understand its dynamics.
On one hand nature is personified as a “Mother”, a creator and controlling force by us but unfortunately on the other hand we have not left any stone unturned to devastate it. This should not be done, instead, we should come forward with conservation strategies and link them to our rituals and customs. A beautiful example of this is presented by the villagers of Piplantri region of Rajasthan where they planted 111 trees every time a girl child is borne and the community ensures these trees survive, attain fruiting as the girl grows up.
Nothing can inspire us more than our inner spiritual voice which can be heard better when in nature and this is the best time we stay connected with our mother nature, take care of it by planting trees inside and outside our premises, water the plants already growing nearby and let the nature take care of us better.
(The author is Ph.D Research Scholar Department of Botany University of Jammu, Jammu)
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